Spamming legal?

Actually, I agree with the ruling. It would be bad if you weren't allowed to get a message to the public if it were important. Then the only question would be, who would decide what's important? It's a slippery slope that free speech is meant to address.

The state government will probably have to revise the law, so that fellow would escape on that point. However, as the AG pointed out, can he just be charged with fraud?

Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)

I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.

Free speech is only free so long as it does not infringe upon another's rights. The court here is using it as a catch-all that anyone has the right to say anything to anyone without consequences and that is not the first ammendment. I fail to see how a message about increasing the size of somone's bust or other members falls under free speech when it is sent to my inbox without my permission and when I did not authorize the person to even have my email address in the first place. Sorry but the court is way off base here.

I expect this to go further. Surprising that VA overturned this since this state is so law ridden. The cops here in VA are a bit on the oppressive side and most of the traffic laws, at least, are extremely ridiculous.

Free speech is only free so long as it does not infringe upon another's rights. The court here is using it as a catch-all that anyone has the right to say anything to anyone without consequences and that is not the first ammendment.

From my reading of that article, I beg to differ. The argument of the court is that the law that was applied was such that it would prohibit free speech that does not infringe upon another's rights (i.e., it was too broad). Consequently, that law is unconstitutional. Now, since that law is unconstitutional, a conviction based on that law can be overturned. The court did not rule that "anyone has the right to say anything to anyone without consequences".

Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)

I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.

Many of VA's laws are too broad and when taken to court they fall apart and get hammered. I understand the ruling in this case, however, it is unfortunate that it allowed a useless spammer to go free. But you are correct in that they are protecting people from laws that are too broad so in this case it is the wording of the law that let the man go free.

Ah yes, but back to my question Can the spammer be charged for fraud or some other crime instead? I do not think it would be considered double jeopardy since it would be a different crime that he would be charged with.

Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)

I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.

Well if were up to me, I'd throw away the whole constitution and start over. Too many people get off by quoting they have the right to free speech or to bare arms...
Free speech is one thing, but spam is another.
What about people that have to pay per minute or per byte of Internet usage? Why should they have to pay extra for other people's useless crap? A lot of spam I see isn't even selling anything, it just has a bunch of random letters like a cat walked across the keyboard.
I honestly can't understand why they bother sending spam out anyways? Does ANYONE actually click those links and buy stuff?

"I am probably the laziest programmer on the planet, a fact with which anyone who has ever seen my code will agree." - esbo, 11/15/2008

"the internet is a scary place to be thats why i dont use it much." - billet, 03/17/2010

Free speech is one thing, but spam is another.
What about people that have to pay per minute or per byte of Internet usage? Why should they have to pay extra for other people's useless crap?

What can I say?
Why do I have to put up with publicity in the web if I'm paying for my connection? Why does my ISP portal take more time to load on my browser than a hay truck? Why are porn websites allowed in the public network if they are prohibit in public TV?

I'm not saying you are wrong. But... you know...

Originally Posted by brewbuck:Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

What about people that have to pay per minute or per byte of Internet usage? Why should they have to pay extra for other people's useless crap?

This argument would have more bite if there weren't so many things you can do to minimize spam. If you use the internet enough to care about your bandwidth meter than you should be able to respect the law of adverse outcomes and use an ad blocker and a email filter.

This argument would have more bite if there weren't so many things you can do to minimize spam. If you use the internet enough to care about your bandwidth meter than you should be able to respect the law of adverse outcomes and use an ad blocker and a email filter.

E-mail filters won't help. You have to download the message before your filter can see it, so you still pay for it. Unless the filter is on the Mail server, in which case you probably have to pay for that service as well.

"I am probably the laziest programmer on the planet, a fact with which anyone who has ever seen my code will agree." - esbo, 11/15/2008

"the internet is a scary place to be thats why i dont use it much." - billet, 03/17/2010